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Extended deadline for ‘Keeping Boys out of Risk’ competition

Closing date pushed back to 27 January 2009 for successful projects working with disadvantaged young people in the Caribbean. In addition, the Regional Caribbean Conference on Boys Underachievement in Education has been rescheduled to 6-8 May 2009.

20 January 2009 - The application deadline for a regional competition launched to identify and promote successful projects working with youth-at-risk in the Caribbean has been extended until 27 January 2009.

The competition, 'The Caribbean Contest: Keeping Boys out of Risk', is targeting government ministries and offices, schools, universities, special projects, NGOs and stakeholders from the private sector working with disadvantaged young people in the region.

Experts working in the Caribbean have identified a rapidly growing gap between boys' and girls' participation and performance levels in education that affects boys negatively, while research has shown that early drop-out and underperformance in school directly increase the risk of negative outcomes and engagement in other risky behaviours such as crime and violence.

"We need to tackle the factors that lead young people to engage in harmful behaviours, otherwise this will be both economically and socially costly for societies at large," says Dr Jyotsna Jha, an Adviser at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

In May 2009, the Secretariat and the World Bank are hosting a two-day regional conference in Jamaica to look at why boys are underachieving and how this impacts on society, as well as to identify adequate policies and instruments to address the problem.

Winners of the contest will be invited to present their experiences at this conference and these best practices will be summarised in a publication which will be widely disseminated and promoted through printed material, the internet and other media. The Prime Minister of Jamaica, Bruce Golding, is expected to open the conference in presence of a good number of experts from the Caribbean as well as the rest of the regions.

National and regional stakeholders in World Bank and Commonwealth member countries in the Caribbean are eligible to submit application(s) for one or more activities that are currently ongoing or completed after the year 2000.

Participating initiatives should fall under one of the following three categories: